My 144 Books of 2023

79 days, 22 hours, and 48 minutes of content. 30 recommendations.

This has been a very good year for me in general, and particularly in terms of books. I’ve read many great ones, learned a lot, and started writing and publishing reviews for real. Now I want to share with you some stats and the most shining gems of this year.

Stats

How much have I read?

                        +============+=============+=======+
                        | Fiction    | Non-fiction | Total |
+=======================+============+=============+=======+
| Books read            | 78 (54%)   | 66 (46%)    | 144   |
+-----------------------+------------+-------------+-------+
| Content length (days) | 53.6 (67%) | 26.35 (33%) | 79.95 |
+=======================+============+=============+=======+

80 days of content? Did I spend over 5 hours a day reading? Not at all. I “read” exclusively through audiobooks, and I do it at a speed varying between 2.5x and 3.0x. This means I’ve spent approximately 2 hours a day listening to books. That’s still a lot, but much more manageable. I checked the listen time/page ratio, and it seems I’ve consumed the equivalent of roughly 57k pages.

This year, I was heavily biased toward fiction. Even though I wish the numbers were reversed, I don’t regret it in the end. I’ve read some really outstanding fiction that provided me with quality entertainment.

When I started publishing, I decided to give a rating to each book. It turns out that more than one in four books I’ve read was excellent! Am I too lenient, or were those books really that great? It’s hard to say, but considering the overall volume, I have a pretty decent comparison group.

                           +=========+=============+=======+
                           | Fiction | Non-fiction | Total |
+==========================+=========+=============+=======+
| Average rating (1-4)     | 3       | 3.14        | 3.06  |
+==========================+=========+=============+=======+

+========+==========+============+============+============+
| Rating | 1        | 2          | 3          | 4          |
+========+==========+============+============+============+
| Count  | 2 (1.3%) | 24 (16.7%) | 84 (58.3%) | 40 (27.8%) |
+========+==========+============+============+============+

Best books

Let’s look into those excellent ones! I won’t repeat the reviews, but you will find a link to one along with each book. I maintained my usual split between fiction and non-fiction, but I also separated books related to my work (software engineering) from those applicable to any profession.

Non-fiction

Technical

• Designing Data-Intensive Applications (4+/4, BBR#8)
• Accelerate (4/4, BBR#7)
• The Manager’s Path (4/4, BBR#8)
• Inspired (4/4, BBRA#9)
• Radical Candor (4/4, BBRA#9)
• Staff Engineer (4/4, BBRA#8)
• The Staff Engineer’s Path (4-/4, BBR#13)

General

• Metabolical (4+/4, BBR#1)
• Nonviolent Communication (4/4, BBR#17)
• The 2-Hour Cocktail Party (4/4, BBR#5)
• When Breath Becomes Air (4/4, BBR#1)
• How To (4/4, BBRA#8)
• What the Buddha Taught (4-/4, BBR#17)
• Surrounded by Idiots (4-/4, BBR#17)
• Immune (4-/4, BBR#14)
• Law School for Everyone (4-/4, BBR#12)
• What if? 2 (4-/4, BBR#11)
• TED Talks (4-/4, BBR#13)
• Essentialism (4-/4, BBR#6)
• Cassandra Speaks (4-/4, BBR#2)
• Born a Crime (4-/4, BBRA#8)
• How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen (4-/4, BBRA#8)

Fiction

• The Wandering Inn (Vol. 1: 4/4, BBR#15; Vol. 2: 4-/4, BBR#16)
• Dungeon Crawler Carl (Vol. 1–5: 4/4 BBRA#9; Vol. 2: 3/4, BBR#12)
• Exhalation (4/4, BBRA#9)
• The Laundry Files (Vol. 1 & 2: 4-/4, BBR#8)

Series continuations

• He Who Fights with Monsters (Vol. 9: 4/4, BBR#2; Vol. 10: BBR#17)
• Cradle (Vol. 12: 4/4, BBR#5)
• The Primal Hunter (Vol. 1: 3/4, BBR#4; Vol. 2–6: 3/4, BBR#10; Vol. 7: 4-/4, BBR#16)
• Defiance of the Fall (Vol. 10: BBR#9; Vol. 11: 4-/4, BBR#16)

Main motives

There are a few main motives that manifested in my reading this year:

• The Best Courses — While I was familiar with this series before, this year I became fully convinced that it’s a very good source of high-quality content. By now, I’ve read six books from that publisher and all were really, really good.
• LitRPG — Last year, I discovered the genre in general and by now I’ve read more than 50 titles across over 15 series. I plan to write a dedicated article about this chunk of my reading, showing different patterns, approaches, and differentiating factors across series.
• Medicine & Anatomy — I’ve read two outstanding books about the workings of the human body this year and I believe I found a new area of interest. I would gladly explore it more in 2024.
• Communication — In H2, I focused quite a bit on books related to communication and I believe this improved my life a lot. There are still a few titles I’d like to read, and a few I have to read again to fully internalize.

Goals for 2024

While I’m not a big fan of goals in general (I believe in “do your best and it will be fine” instead), there are a few things I’d like to happen this year.

• 100 books, 12 great ones — This past year was exceptional, and I don’t hope to repeat it, neither in terms of quality nor quantity. However, if the next one is even remotely close, it will be a success.
• More quality fiction — Exhalation reminded me of my love for short stories and books that explore interesting ideas (think Black Mirror). I would like to read more pieces that follow this theme.
• More about religions & cultures — Growing and living in a very homogeneous country (Poland has deep Christian roots and not much foreign influence) can be somewhat limiting. I would like to expand my horizons and learn more about the major world religions and cultures. I have already started this path with Buddhism and have found some promising courses from The Great Courses about others.
• More about software engineering — I feel like I don’t focus enough on the ground-level part of my craft, and so I’d like to read more deeply technical books (e.g., like Designing Data-Intensive Applications). This is not easy because these kinds of books are rarely available as audiobooks, but I will do my best!

If you found this article interesting, you can follow my publication, VP of Books, where I post short book reviews at least once a month. Alternatively, just follow me on Twitter (if you don’t mind a good dose of crapposting and non-book-related content).